March 9 (Bloomberg) -- A collective-bargaining vote by
airport security workers that starts today may give federal
employee groups their biggest victory in years, even as public
workers in some states struggle to keep their union status.

The country’s two largest federal-employee unions are
competing to represent the 44,000 screeners who can cast their
ballots through April 19. The effort, which Senate Republicans
failed to stop last month, may raise Transportation Security
Administration costs if workers push through changes such as
increased staffing.

“It’s a historic election,” said John Gage, president of
the 600,000-member American Federation of Government Employees,
which is vying to represent the screeners. “This is the biggest
labor vote in probably 25 years.” The workers would be the
largest-ever group brought into the union at one time, he said
in a telephone interview.

Gage and Colleen Kelley, president of the competing
National Treasury Employees Union, with about 150,000 members,
expect one of them will prevail over another option -- no union
at all. That’s in contrast to states such as Wisconsin, Ohio and
New Jersey, where public workers are fighting reductions in
benefits and bargaining rights and not expecting gains.

“It’s really a big deal,” Kelley said in a telephone
interview. “This is the largest election that has ever been
held in the federal sector.”

President Barack Obama, a Democrat who won the White House
with labor support, is allowing the vote. Republican President
George W. Bush’s administration blocked union organization in
January 2003, more than a year after the agency was created.

‘Political Kickback’

“President Obama made this decision for one reason: to
give a political kickback to the union bosses who poured money
into his campaign,” Senator James DeMint, a South Carolina
Republican, said in a statement e-mailed by his spokesman.

The White House referred comment to the security agency.

"TSA is committed to the integrity of this election and to
supporting the employees’ right to choose by staying neutral
throughout this process,’’ Kristin Lee, a spokeswoman for the
agency, said in an e-mail.

DeMint on Feb. 15 supported a proposal by Senator Roger
Wicker, a Mississippi Republican, that would have barred agency
workers from organizing. The Democratic-controlled Senate
defeated the proposal, 51-47.

Gage said one of his priorities would be to boost staffing
at airports where screeners have been forced work split shifts.
Some work about three hours in the morning, take a mandatory
break of about four hours, and finish three more hours later in
the day, he said.

“It’s just an ungodly system,” Gage said. “They’ve
really skimped on some aspects of airport security.”

Almost 5,000 employees work split shifts at 342 airports,
according to agency figures.

Allowing Favoritism?

Gage and Kelley said they would also aim to scrap the pay-for-performance system, which according to the agency gives
financial incentives for superior performance.

The existing program allows for favoritism and “is based
on really low wages,” Kelley said. While a union can’t bargain
over pay according to TSA rules, it can discuss the process for
determining who gets awards, she said.

John Pistole, the security agency’s chief, said in his Feb.
4 decision allowing the election that workers also can’t bargain
over security or disciplinary penalties, strike, or take job
actions such as deliberate slowdowns.

They can bargain for a contract of at least three years on
issues such as their uniforms, parking subsidies, transfers,
shift trades, and methods for seeking assignments and leaves,
Pistole said in the decision.